Mexican officials have put the death toll of the magnitude 7.1 earthquake at 217 – but the US Geological Survey predicts that as many as 1,000 may have perished.

The USGS’s model for estimating earthquake damage also predicts economic losses of up to $10 billion for a temblor this size and proximity to heavily populated centers like Mexico City.

The earthquake struck 76 miles southeast of the earthquake-prone capital at 2:14 p.m. Tuesday, officials said, and came on the 32nd anniversary of the infamous 1985 quake that killed about 10,000 people.

Scientists said the same large-scale tectonic mechanism caused both events — the larger North American Plate is forcing the edge of the Cocos Plate to sink.

This collision generated both temblors, but experts said it was unlikely that the earlier quake caused Tuesday’s disaster.

Mexico is in a region where a number of tectonic plates brush up against one another, with huge amounts of energy waiting to be unleashed.

Mexico City is partly built on old lake sediment, which is much softer than rock. The seismic waves can be amplified traveling through the sediment, making the damage worse, said Don Blakeman, a geophysicist with the USGS.

The rupture was about 31 miles deep, and as a rule, the shallower an earthquake is, the higher the chance for aftershocks.